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(1897–1962)

Bleak French essayist and thinker. Bataille's unsystematic work can be characterized as a kind of followon from Nietzsche, concentrating upon the absence of God, the disappearance of the stable subject, and the non-existence of values and identities in modern life. The principal notion is that of ‘expenditure’; a squandering of force that has no other end but the process itself. Works included The Inner Experience (1943) and Theory of Religion (1948).